Friday, July 27, 2012

If all comic book movies were as good as The Dark Knight Rises, I would forever swear off making fun of them.

Consider the faintly silly premise: A billionaire who wears a disguise and fights crime with his bare hands and cool gadgets in his spare time. It's a crazy thing, and there are movies who laugh at the whole superhero idea: Kick-Ass (2010) and Super (2010). But there is nobody more serious about comic-book movies than Christopher Nolan. He understands something about how audiences connect to this genre that few other directors in the genre do.

This is the key: There are no superheros in Christopher Nolan's superhero movies.

Bruce Wayne is just a rich guy with great toys who is often in over his head. The Batman may be the titular center of this trilogy, but there is also a cast of perfectly regular people who take up probably as much screen time as he does. Some are rich, some are brilliant, but for the most part most can be summed up in the character of Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) A regular, hard-working person whose only superior aspect is the amount of decency he embodies.

Nolan went through the cast of comic-book characters and remade them as relatable people: Selena Kyle (Anne Hathaway as Catwoman, but is never called that in The Dark Knight Rises) is a thief about to be overwhelmed by her past. Alfred (Michael Caine), is tormented by the reckless choices Bruce Wayne makes in his pursuit of justice-- A performance I guarantee will choke you up. Joseph Gordon-Leavitt plays Blake, a perfectly normal, if exceedingly decent, cop who somehow knows Batman's true identity. Even Bane (Tom Hardy, according to the credits), the villain of the piece, is given a backstory near the end that is more tragic than ominous.

Nolan's passion for getting the outsized down to a relatable level even extends to how he stages his amazing action sequences. Sure, some are digitally constructed-- you can't blow up a bridge or a football stadium for a movie, though Nolan did blow up a hospital for the last movie-- but only when digital is the only practical solution. His car chases are real, and the amazing mid-air kidnapping that starts the film was real too. I wrote a while ago about It's a Mad, Mad Mad, Mad World (1963) and the impact it still retains through it's stunning number of spectacular, absolutely real stunts. Nolan understands the power of showing what is real: real human-scaled characters, real stunts. Showing what is real resonates with audiences.

Is there a correlation between relying on virtual effects and synthetic heroes, 3D movies and flat characters? Joss Whedon has been dealt a hatful of heroes in Marvel's The Avengers but I defy you to really care about any of them (except for Mark Ruffalo's Bruce Banner/The Hulk, who was quite soulful). The Amazing Spider-Man, that contractual obligation comic-book movie which opened a few weeks ago, drew huge ho-hums (it did quite decently, though it hasn't covered it's $230M budget quite yet).The Dark Knight Rises is not just the best comic-book movie this summer: It's a superior motion picture, one that delivers everything it promises, makes you care, and leaves you wanting more at the end.

A few loose notes:

Bane. You'll be seeing a lot more
of him come October 31st.

• As much as I liked everything about this film, I think they way they decided to portray Bane (a Batman graphic-novel villain from the 90s) was a serious misstep. I had no problem with his character: He introduces himself to Gotham as a super-determined revolutionary, the scourge of the One Percent, before he unveils his chilling true mission. But he looks kinda, I dunno, cheap: like a baddie someone slapped together with costume pieces from a Spirit Halloween Superstore. He has a wheezy, hard-to understand voice: like a combination of The Humongous (from The Road Warrior) and Lane Pryce from “Mad Men."

• It's impossible to ignore the horrific events in Aurora, Colorado when watching The Dark Knight Rises. It's an itch of a thought, popping up unexpectedly during the quiet moments and the most violent ones. It's a remarkably bloodless movie (It's PG-13, and Warner Bros. Knows their core audience well) but the nihilism that is the driving force of the villains cannot help but make one reflect on the senselessness of Aurora.

The dark tone of the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy stands as a reflection of the damage to our collective psyche caused by the 9/11 attack. That catastrophic attack tore a hole in America's sense of self that we're still trying to fill, an awful puzzle we're still trying to solve. It was the ultimate expression of deliberate, compassionless mass murder, done for a purpose we still do not fully understand. This collective dread of inexplicable violence is written into every scene of The Dark Night Rises (and even more so in The Dark Night). This movie, a work of escapist entertainment depicting a world full of nihilistic villains, will now be intimately and forever bound to an actual act of a nihilistic villain.

• Seen at the Century Tanforan in the XD auditorium (bigger screen, cushier seats, still not IMAX), a venue I used to dread because of the high proportion of jerky kids usually in attendance. But there has been a slow but profound change in both kids and public behavior in general over the last few years. I looked around when the lights came up and-- Yup, everyone was staring raptly at the blue glow of their phones, stroking them tenderly bottom-to-top to see all the status updates they missed over the last three hours. It's annoying and a little depressing-- but it sure is quiet.

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Thursday, July 5, 2012

One of the things I did yesterday to pass the time on my day off was watch an episode of Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea on Hulu. As American as anything else, I thought. The show bears a second look through the prism of adulthood, because it's f***in' nuts.

I chose The Phantom Strikes, an episode from the 2nd season because it featured Alfred Ryder, a favorite 60's character actor, and sported this synopsis: The crew of the Seaview is haunted by a phantom U-Boat and her ghostly captain. More specifically, the ghostly Captain Krueger (died 1917) wants to commandeer the body of Captain Crane (David Hedison) and keeps appearing to Admiral Nelson (Richard Basehart) demanding that he kill his second in command, with a pistol, so the body will be available. The ghost arbitrarily tells Nelson that he must complete the task before the Seaview crosses the 49th parallel, or he will destroy Crane, Nelson and the entire crew. Nelson keeps this conversations a secret, and almost shoots Crane, but changes his mind at the last minute. The ghost comes back to destroy the ship but realizes that his plan is pointless because he'd never get the hang of all the new technology that the Seaview uses, and he walks off into the sunset. Through the hull on the observation deck.

Not from the episode we're talking about, but close enough.

Basehart overacts the hell out of this scenario, to the point that it's uncomfortably easy to think the whole "ghost told me to kill you" thing takes place in his head. Usually Basehart's Admiral Nelson is a portrait of a man who is this close to cracking under the pressure of command. He is all barely suppressed feelings, versus Hedison's no feelings whatsoever portrayal. In fact, that lack of emotion makes the central implausibility of this episode work; a guy pulls a gun on you without explaining why at first, but you remain good friends. Sure! Makes no less sense than the rest of the scenario. I'm a little freaked out about the near murder, but I've seen worse from the Admiral!

Also I gotta say if I were forcing you to get me a body to inhabit, I'd specify that it not have a gaping chest wound. I mean, especially if I were going to try to keep the whole thing on the DL.

This was actually one of the less outlandish episodes of the series. Like a lot of Irwin Allen productions it started out fairly reasonable and got crazy stupid with each successive season. And according to Wikipedia, it somehow managed to snag 4 Emmys. I bet they all went to the flying sub, but whatever. My favorite episode to date is from season 1 and it features a young Robert Duvall as an alien (tall, robed, pale, bald, no ears) that they find in a canister on the sea floor, who wants the ship so he can revive his alien brethren to take over the Earth. Sheer magic. A rule of thumb is whenever they bring someone aboard the Seaview without an appointment, it's going to be trouble.

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

This week we're Youtube-fee! Events are conspiring to keep me from broadband today, so as you read this, imagine it in a silky, high-ish voice.

So my friends at Variety.com tell me that the number one movie the weekend of June29-July 1 was about a Teddy bear who sounds like the dog on Family Guy. Yes, it's Seth McFarlane's Ted, which pulled down $54 million. Also new and surprisingly popular, Steven Soderbergh's Magic Mike, starring Channing Tatum (his stripper name, I bet) as a stripper. It made $39 million, which is great considering what it must have cost. Now Soderbergh can make another dozen Cosmopolis movies.

Tyler Perry's Madea's Witness Protection was pretty muscular under that dress, making $25 million. Madea is money in the bank!